Special love relationships versus holy relationships

On earth you hear people talk a lot about love. But when you come close to them you realize that they do not know a thing about love. They just talk the talk but do not walk their talk.

At best, people practice the type of love that Erich Fromm talked about in his book, The Art of love. Here, people care for each other and put each other's needs above theirs. This works. But there is another type of love, spiritual love; spiritual love is the object of this essay.

What is love, anyway? Many people talk about love and talk about it all the time and actually do not know what love is!

Love can be easily defined as union; love is joining with the loved one. Love is the opposite of separation from people.

The ideas in this essay are primarily from A course in miracles, plus, of course, my thinking.

In eternity, aka heaven we are one self, literally not figuratively; that one self, aka God has infinite selves in it all of whom are it and it is them.

Obviously, we cannot use our present state of separated minds to understand the nature of non-duality. For now, assume that it is true.

In the state of heaven's union the idea of separation entered. The parts of God, the sons of God, the children God wished to separate from him and from each other and go experience the opposite of their nature; their nature is unified and they wanted to experience separated states.

It is impossible for them to separate from God and from each other. Unable to separate from eternity they, as it were, went to sleep and in their dream invented space, time and matter and used matter to construct bodies for themselves. Now they live in bodies and bodies give them a sense of separation from each other and from the whole called God.

In their new world there is space and time between them. I am over here and you are over there; there is space between us and it takes time for me to reach you and for you to reach me so we must be separated from each other.

Moreover, what at this moment is giving me pain may not be causing your body pain now so you appear to be different from me. The logic of our earthly existence is that we are separated selves.

But our true nature is unified. Thus, ion earth even though we came to seem separated from each other we feel lonely and incomplete, for we can only feel completed in union with other selves and with God.

We cannot deal with the loneliness so unwillingly we began relating to other people (please note that animals live alone; people as animals lived alone until a few thousand years ago when they formed marriages...and since they are currently destroying marriages they are reverting to animal status where they live alone and civilization ends). We form special love relationships.

In special love relationships two or more people retain their right to separate from each other but form temporary unions, as in marriages, associations, societies. In these relationships we agree to respect each other's individuality. If you do not respect your partner's individuality he or she leaves you. These relationships are based on mutual satisfactions; you must have what the other person desires for him to agree to stay with you.

If a woman desires wealth you must have it for her to marry you and when you become poor she leaves you; if she desires social position you must have it, if she desires intellectual discussions you must have it; by the same token, the man desires some things, such as beauty and she must have it or else he does not gravitate to her, or leaves her when age makes her beauty wane and go marry younger beautiful women.

In special relationships people are essentially separated persons but to deal with loneliness agree to have temporary unions and can leave the unions at any time.

When they leave each other, as in divorce, they say that the other is the devil itself even though hitherto they had seen him as an angel. This is what the world calls love relationships; a love situation where people retain the ability to leave is no love; it is special love and the specialness must be met or else the partners leave.

In these relationships people are essentially lonely and feel anxious, fearful and depressed. But they do not know what caused their anxiety and depression and blame it on the other without realizing that it is their retention of right to leave that caused it. This is the world's relationships, it is false love, pseudo love relationships; it is not based on true love.

True love is found in formless unified spirit, in heaven where we are all sharing one self and one mind and cannot leave each other. But we decided to experience the opposite of that spiritual love hence manifest in bodies and try to replicate love in body. This is substitute love, replacement love and is not love; real love is in unified spiritual self and cannot be left.

FEAR IS A MEANS OF MAINTAINING SEPARATED SELVES

When we manifest in separated states we invented fear. Fear is a means of alerting us to what other people do that could harm our bodies and egos hence end our separated status and urge us to run away or fight to retain our individuality.

Fear is thus a means of retaining ones separated self. Since separated self is the opposite of union, the opposite of love, fear is the opposite of love.

If you feel fear you are not in love with your partner and if you feel love you are not in fear. Fear is the opposite of love and love is the opposite of fear.

Are you always in fear? If so you do not love your partner and yourself and people in general; you are protecting your separated self. The only way to reduce your fear is for you to love you and your partner and people in general.

Please note my definition of fear here; I define it as a spiritual thing; I am a mental health professional and know about scientific conceptions of fear as purely somatic but I am not writing scientific psychology here; I am writing spiritual psychology here.

We invented separated selves and their special love relationships to seem in union while retaining separation, individuality.

HOLY RELATIONSHIPS WHERE WE SEE THE GOD IN EACH OTHER

The Holy Spirit, the God in us, the God in the temporal universe, the immanent God, the God in our right minds can transform our special relationships to holy relationships, if we ask him. In holy relationships we overlook each other's bodies and what they can give to our egos and see the spirit in them, the son of God in them, and their real selves and love it. We are still in bodies but now we use our bodies to love other people's spirits in their bodies.

In holy relationships, our earthly love approximates heavenly love but is not it, for it is still in forms; heavenly love is not in forms.

In heaven we are formless and true love is formless. As long as we are in body we must have fear and therefore cannot really love but we can overlook our bodies and use them to seem to love one another.

In after death life we are in light forms, we are still in forms albeit light; we still do not have real love for love cannot exist in forms, dense or light.

In light forms we have holy relationships; we use our light bodies to love each other more so than we do on earth.

There is little or no love in our present dense bodies; there is some love in light bodies; there is total, perfect love in our formless selves in heaven.

For our present purposes, on earth what we have are pseudo love relationships. It is better than the psychological pain of loneliness.

If you desire some joy, you must strive to overlook your partner's body and love the spirit in him or her.

The goal of life on earth is for us to improve our relationships, to transform them from special love to holy relationships where we affirm the divinity is each other.

I could write volumes on the nature of special and holy relationships but I have done so elsewhere and in this piece just wanted to introduce the concepts and let folks know that what we call love on earth is not love but substitute love.

Understand that you do not love your husband or wife and that both of you are in a special relationship; understand that you can at any time choose to transform that relationships to holy relationships by affirming the Christ in both of us or leave your partner. The choice is yours to make; nobody can prevent you from choosing either.

If you choose special love you live in fear, anxiety and anger and depression; if you choose holy relationship you reduce your fear, anger and depression but not eliminate them.

Mental disorders can only be eliminated in formless love, in God, when we leave the earth and return to our true home in formless God.

In God we are the same, coequal and unified; but on earth we are different from each other and not equal.

We came here to feel unequal and different from each other. So, experiences what you came to experience, inequality, differences and individuality and when you have had enough of its pain then you try holy relationships where you accept our inherent sameness, equality and love.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji’s goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Anchorage, Alaska, USA.